READ THE PREFACE

A Letter to the Reader as a Point of Departure

This book has been written to guide us in our endeavor to transform our world by becoming free of the fear that plagues our lives. As its author, what intrigues me most is that I never thought the effort would have anything to do with the world of business. I say this because, as a young man, I was given a glimpse into the true nature of that world and found it so upsetting that in vowing to avoid it, I could only run from it. But in doing so, I failed to understand what it was and where it existed. I simply thought it was a world unto itself, where only business people would have to go. But as I was to later learn, it was everywhere I wanted to be, and for this reason there was no escaping.

One moment, I’m on the bus that has stopped at an intersection on the way to school, looking at the occupants in the cars that wait their turn at the light.Suddenly, the boundary of thinking and feeling dissolves before the wave of silence that is pouring into my mind, instantly revealing everything about these people. Each one is trapped in an illusion, which compels them to work at jobs to earn the money that pays for the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, the food they eat and the places they sleep — but only enough to sustain them to do so the next day and the next, until their end. Then from out of the silence a Voice says,“Mankind is engaged in a process that has nothing to do with what Life is about.”

While it’s difficult to explain what happened that day, I do know this: I experienced a shift in awareness without knowing why. I realized humanity was stuck in an illusion that made us seek a better place without ever arriving. I sensed that business enabled this process, without knowing how. And I knew that I wanted nothing to do with any of it. So, I began to plot my escape, motivated by the desire to not become one of those people sitting in their cars, waiting for the light to change. But, as I sought my way out, I was confronted at every turn by the need to understand the truth that now occupied my mind. Along the way, I was transformed from a shy, impetuous teenager into a rebel without a pause, who could not help angrily contrasting the content of every single moment against the import of the one that now defined everything else. To those of you who have experienced this side of me – and you most surely know who you are – I sincerely apologize for such behavior you’ve had to endure. Thankfully, after years of searching, I came to understand that FEAR is the process that has nothing to do with what life is about because it perpetuates the illusion of arriving at a place that doesn’t exist.

Curiously, while the content of this book emerged from a perspective that had no interest – and continues to have none – in the allure of the business world, much of its understanding evolved while working as a corporate recruiter, communications consultant and executive coach to high technology companies on several continents. How I ever came to be in this line of work, participating in the world from which I’d vowed to escape, remains one of my life’s mysteries. However, it’s now clear that the friction created between these two conflicting perspectives fostered my education into the process by which we confuse beliefs for truths and effects for causes, and why we lack the need or ability to tell the difference.

It’s no secret, or shouldn’t be by now, that we are living at a time when simply finding the next solution is not enough. The era for piecemeal remedies serving only short-term interests has ended. We now need and can only afford solutions that work at all times and in all circumstances, are complete at the start, middle and end and scale easily to every level of abstraction or specificity without loss of potency. Yet, from where we presently stand, overlooking the apparent abyss of our collective future, what restricts our ability to recognize this is the belief that our problems are so complex that they have no simple answer. But this is not true. What’s true is the parts that now appear to be in conflict are not merely connected but are, in fact, different expressions of the same Principle that is operating faithfully at every level of life.

Subsequently, this work emerges out of the need of the times we are in and those soon to come, to guide humanity towards its Greatest Common Good by revealing how our greatest weakness, our practice of fear, is actually our greatest strength upside-down. But to see this, we must first observe how our personal behaviors create the same obstacles in individual life that later become expressed in our businesses and manifest in our societies. Next, we must let go of our antiquated ways of seeing the world as chaotic and divisive, so that which now appears complex and daunting may become simple and even refreshing. Finally, we must awaken to our sovereign authority, which is the key that frees us from our addiction to fear, for as the expression goes – the buck really does stop here.

So be forewarned, nothing you will read here is based on conventional wisdom, theories or practices. These are the confessions of a fear junkie who was addicted to a system that offered no hope of escape and yet found a way out: one that proceeds from the understanding that our practices of business and the economic systems they serve are out of right relationship with the business of being human. As such, it is the premise of this book that the way to solve the problems of humankind is to transform the World of Business to serve the Business of Humanity, not enslave it.

As individuals wishing to participate in this transformation, our point of departure is clear. We begin by asking the questions that our collective beliefs have been designed to ignore – the ones that peer deeply into the underbelly of life asking, “Is this really the way life’s supposed to be?” For until we investigate the blind assumptions that have become the ignored landscape of what we call Life, we will remain excluded from an awareness of the Principle that is operating 100% of the time. Once we do see it, however, we will understand that what now stands before us is the opportunity to choose differently, where anything less means we’re destined to remain prey to our practices of fear, which have not worked in the past, cannot work now and will never work in the future.

So, let each of us start by considering: why is it that the world of business routinely conducts warfare within and upon itself, between and amongst its ranks? Why do we practice fear, separation and scarcity and yet wonder why we fail to achieve our goals? Finally, what do such activities generate within our individual, social and global ecologies? The answers come easily when we understand that the behaviors we practice in one system will always affect its expression in others as well: such is the law of cause and effect. Given this scaled inter-connectivity, why do we pursue solutions in the form of new philosophies, ideologies and technologies, beautiful eco-villages and green financial models and yet deploy them in a paradigm of fear that perpetuates the very problems we seek to correct? Problems and their solutions do not exist in isolation, though we often pretend this to be so; nothing is an island unto itself and by the way, business is always personal.

The reason we miss the implications of our behavior is because we’ve been distracted. We’ve been seduced into believing we’re going to get somewhere better: a mythical place that has been invented to motivate flawed economic systems by promoting the need to escape them. This is because such systems compel us to purchase our freedom through the acquisition of money, which for a time hides the reality of our servitude. But, when the money is gone, what before obscured the truth now reveals that our freedom is on loan to us and this is why we are afraid. Does the truth of this shock you? If not, then consider this: why do the participants of every economic system seek to insulate, isolate or escape, by dropping out, buying out, or just plain selling out? They do so because such systems, being founded in fear, can never deliver their promise of freedom and therefore are not sustainable. Until this is understood, our collective frustration about the world lacks the power to change it. But once recognized, we find both the Power and the Will to set things aright.

So, I say to you now, we need a shift in perspective if we are to recognize how fear prevents the world of business from fulfilling its promise to the individual and society. Sensing this, our path becomes clear, we must become agents of transformation by disallowing the practice of fear in our interactions, thereby allowing the truth inherent in love, belonging and abundance to awaken our corporeal and corporate leadership. Only in this way will the world of business evolve from pillaging predator to benevolent benefactor and therefore serve the business of being human.

Be forewarned, as willing participants for the changes the times now demand, we will be challenged. For living without fear is a departure from what has been shown as the way to navigate the Unknown. But in remembering that our current path can only deliver us to the same place where we currently stand, our endeavor becomes clear: abandon fear, reclaim the Power and the Will to set things aright and restore our Practice of Business into right relationship with the Business of Humanity. Such is the purpose of Corporate CPR, to reveal the guidance hidden in plain sight within us by those who have entrusted it to us.